If science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unkn...own to medical science, give it its power, rather than the gestures of ceremony.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Modern civilization has bred a race with brains like those of rabbits and we who are the heirs of the witch-doctor and the voodoo.... We artists who have been so long the despised are about to take over control.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit t...o be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for.... Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well. It means that everybody should have a job, if he's willing to work, and an education, and the right to bring up his children without fear of the future. And it means that the old shall be provided for, without shame to themselves or to their families. It means do unto others as you would have others do unto you. It also means the prayers of the pilgrim fathers in the wilderness, and the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Proclamation, and the dreams of an immigrant mother for her children. And that's what I believe in.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all l...ife, all races and breeds into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive. At the feet of the tallest and plushest offices lie the crummiest slums. The genteel mysteries housed in the Riverside Church are only a few blocks from the voodoo charms of Harlem. The merchant princes, riding to Wall Street in their limousines down the East River Drive, pass within a few hundred yards of the gypsy kings; but the princes do not know they are passing the kings, and the kings are not up yet anyway--they live a more leisurely life than the princes and get drunk more consistently.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I entered into their ceremonies. I pretended I was possessed by their gods.... The drums, the chanting, the lights. I heard a voic...e speaking in the sudden silence. My voice. I was speaking to the houngan. I was possessed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »